An odd thing, this, I think.  Tearing home (for the more he was engrossed in mind the quicker he walked), Tommy was not revelling in Pym’s praise; he was neither blanching nor smiling at the thought that he of all people had written as one who was unloved; he was not wondering what Grizel would say to it; he had even forgotten to sigh over his own coming dissolution (indeed, about this time the flower-pot began to fade from his memory).  What made him cut his way so excitedly through the streets was this:  Pym had questioned his use of the word “untimely” in chapter eight.  And Tommy had always been uneasy about that word.

He glared at every person he passed, and ran into perambulators.  He rushed past his chambers like one who no longer had a home.  He was in the park now, and did not even notice that the Row was empty, that mighty round a deserted circus; management, riders, clowns, all the performers gone on their provincial tour, or nearly all, for a lady on horseback sees him, remembers to some extent who he is, and gives chase.  It is our dear Mrs. Jerry.

“You wretch,” she said, “to compel me to pursue you!  Nothing could have induced me to do anything so unwomanly except that you are the only man in town.”

She shook her whip so prettily at him that it was as seductive as a smile.  It was also a way of gaining time while she tried to remember what it was he was famous for.

“I believe you don’t know me!” she said, with a little shriek, for Tommy had looked bewildered.  “That would be too mortifying.  Please pretend you do!”

Her look of appeal, the way in which she put her plump little hands together, as if about to say her prayers, brought it all back to Tommy.  The one thing he was not certain of was whether he had proposed to her.

It was the one thing of which she was certain.

“You think I can forget so soon,” he replied reproachfully, but carefully.

“Then tell me my name,” said she; she thought it might lead to his mentioning his own.

“I don’t know what it is now.  It was Mrs. Jerry once.”

“It is Mrs. Jerry still.”

“Then you did not marry him, after all?”

No wild joy had surged to his face, but when she answered yes, he nodded his head with gentle melancholy three times.  He had not the smallest desire to deceive the lady; he was simply an actor who had got his cue and liked his part.

[Illustration:  “But my friends still call me Mrs. Jerry,” she said softly.]

“But my friends still call me Mrs. Jerry,” she said softly.  “I suppose it suits me somehow.”

“You will always be Mrs. Jerry to me,” he replied huskily.  Ah, those meetings with old loves!

“If you minded so much,” Mrs. Jerry said, a little tremulously (she had the softest heart, though her memory was a trifle defective), “you might have discovered whether I had married him or not.”

“Was there no reason why I should not seek to discover it?” Tommy asked with tremendous irony, but not knowing in the least what he meant.